Westport Town Hall reopens

Westport Supervisor Mike “Ike” Tyler took a minute from moving last week to provide a tour of the newly restored Town Hall. The arched, high ceilings are original along with the hard-wood flooring. The Town Hall reopened for residential business last week and the Town Court on the second floor (down) will reopen this week.

The open floor plan in the second-floor, down one stairway from the street-front entrance, will house the Westport Town Court and the assessor’s offices with private room for attorneys and a public restroom.

The historic interior trim is remade to frame the white-paneled ceiling. The huge front doors, handcrafted by Kevin Boyle to original specifications, are painted a deep Westport blue.

And several layers of insulation pressed into new walls keep cold at bay for the first time since the structure was built in 1928.

“You could heat this with a candle,” said Westport Supervisor Mike “Ike” Tyler said, pointing to important energy efficiency designs that, in time, will include installation of an electric car charging station in the driveway out back and solar panels.

The total price tag is about $780,000, a combination of grant funds and town monies.

And even though hot-water heating units that will run the long walls in the open meeting room on the first (entry-level) floor, the rooms were warm.

“The heating units are running behind schedule,” Tyler said of the order due for delivery in this week.

RICH HISTORY

Originally built by Westport granger Vernon Gough as the Lake View Grange Hall No. 970, wide spaces connected by ample hallways will welcome community events along with Town Hall meetings, voting booths, presentations and town business gatherings.

Hardwood flooring nearly a century old in the main entry remains the same, though shined and clean.

Its gray-painted shuffleboard court is still here, a remnant of the building’s epoch as a senior activity-center through parts of the 1960s and 1970s.

Its age as the DePew Roller-Rink, starting in 1950, is celebrated with a pair of original Westport DePew Rink roller skates displayed in a glass case, a gift from Judy DePew Howell. Ralph and Esther DePew ran the rink through much of the 1950s.

“When my mom (Shirley Viens) was 13, they had her birthday party here,” Clerk to the Supervisor Robin Crandall said.

Westport’s Lasher-Still Post No. 324 of the American Legion purchased the building from DePews in 1953, and conveyed the property to the town in 1971, according to documents filed with the National Register of Historic Places.

The light spilling into first floor rooms ws enhanced by removal of spongy drop-ceiling tiles. The open floor plan and glassed-in offices suggest transparency, and Tyler said they won’t add shades or blinds to interior glass windows.

“I love it,” Crandall said of her soft green office and adjoining work production area.

“I love the color, it’s very calming and a room I love to be in.”

Tall windows line the eastern back wall at far end of the first floor. The tall panes overlook Lake Champlain, its rolling blue surface and grassy shoreline, and distant ridges of the Green Mountains in Vermont.

Tyler’s desk was obtained second-hand, once the desk used by regional historian Gretna Longware, whose son-in-law George Hainer is the code officer.

The first floor descends from Tyler’s office down a wide stairway to second and third-floor lower levels.

Thus, the floors are numbered as they drop: except on the handicapped-access elevator, where I is the bottom floor and II indicates the street level first-floor.

Hallways downstairs are similarly brightly lit with big windows.

The rooms will soon house the Westport Town Court and the Assessor’s office, complete with meeting rooms for attorneys and their clients, public bathrooms and the fireproof safe that holds generations of Westport’s historic records and documents.

“The court will move in next week,” Tyler said of the second floor, which now has its own exit.

Even though architectural and construction reclamation here is awe-inspiring to see, one of the most important renovations happened in the basement, or “third floor.”

Stairs beside the Westport Court descend another flight where significant structural work strengthened the foundation.

“This took the most time,” Tyler said, opening the doors to a workshop area still very much in use as construction work reaches the punch list.

Pieces of wall trim and sawdust are piled on a solid floor — it’s no longer dirt.

“We’ll use this for storage, but the building is sound,” Tyler said, looking at the rebuilt walls.

Outside, the narrow clapboards that frame the Town Hall’s exterior gleam with new coats of white paint.

“It’s been four or five years since we were awarded the grant funds,” Tyler said of a project that began under former Westport Supervisor Dan Connell.

“We had a $500,000 grant from the State Historic Preservation office plus another $100,000 from NYSERDA (New York State Energy Research and Development Authority). Our match was $180,000.”

But that figure doesn’t account for the volunteer work done by local hands that helped removing old walls, paint and clear debris.

“We had inmates from Moriah Shock to help, too,” Tyler said of the moving.

“By doing that we saved another few hundred thousand dollars.”

The first Town Council meeting in the restored Town Hall was set for Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2017 with the Town Budget Public Hearing.

“This is really a community center for Westport,” Tyler said.

“The town can be really proud of this building and the community effort it took to do this.”